This invention relates to a loading and unloading mechanism and more particularly to an improved material handling device for transferring an article from a first station to a second station and then removing the articles from the second station and placing it at a third station.
Various types of material handling devices have been proposed for moving articles from one station to another. Such devices have particularly utility in production lines where they can be used to reduce the necessity for an operator to do tedious labor and also can be used in areas where it is desired to protect the operator from possible injury by the associated machinery. Frequently, it is desirable to take an article from a first location, place it in a machine for an operation and subsequently remove the article from the machine and place it at another location. Devices have been proposed for this purpose that use a single gripper that picks up the article at the first station, transfers it to the machine and then removes it from the machine an places it at the other station. By using a single gripper, however, the speed of production is sustantially reduced. Alternatively, devices have been proposed that sequentially move an article in a hand-over-hand fashion down a sequence of steps. Such devices, however, are usable only when the successive stations are aligned with each other.
It is, therefore, a principal object of this invention to provide an improved loading and unloading mechanism for handling articles.
It is another object of this invention to provide a loading and unloading mechanism that permits two articles to be handled at the same time, thus increasing the speed of production.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a loading and unloading mechanism that is capable of handling more than one article and which uses a simplified drive mechanism.